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Aims and scope

Pastoralism: Research, Policy and Practice is an interdisciplinary and peer-reviewed journal on extensive livestock production systems throughout the world. Pastoralists rely on rangelands and livestock for their livelihoods, but exhibit different levels of mobility and market involvement, and operate under a variety of different land tenure regimes. Pastoralism publishes research that influences public policy, to improve the welfare of these people and better conserve the environments in which they live.

The journal investigates pastoralism from a variety of disciplinary perspectives across the biophysical, social and economic sciences. This is not applied research in the traditional sense, but relevant research, sometimes even basic research, with the capacity ultimately to change the way practical people do business. Predicting what kind of research will fulfil this role is virtually impossible. What we can do is keep policy makers, practitioners and pastoralists talking to scientists and researchers and aware of each others' concerns.

The interdisciplinary commitment of Pastoralism goes beyond the welcome routinely extended to other disciplines by specialized journals. We predict that the formative work on pastoralism in the coming decade will be situated on the interface between the biological, social and economic sciences. If this prediction is true, then this journal will be part of the process.

Pastoralism: Research, Policy and Practice will publish scientific research and policy analysis on ranching and indigenous pastoralism. The journal is interdisciplinary, global in coverage, and practical in intent.

The journal is committed to publishing material by administrators and field workers who would not normally contribute to a scientific journal. We will devote a portion of the journal to short communications that present fresh ideas or original field material.

Pastoralism was founded in 2009 by Roy Behnke and Carol Kerven, social anthropologists who have each worked for forty years in pastoral and rangeland research and development in many countries. Carol is the Editor-in-Chief and Roy is the Book Review editor.

Why publish your article in Pastoralism?

High visibility

Pastoralism's open access policy allows maximum visibility of articles published in the journal as they are available to a wide, global audience.

Speed of publication

Pastoralism offers a fast publication schedule whilst maintaining rigorous peer review; all articles must be submitted online, and peer review is managed fully electronically (articles are distributed in PDF form, which is automatically generated from the submitted files). Articles will be published with their final citation after acceptance, in both fully browsable web form, and as a formatted PDF; the article will then be available through Pastoralism and SpringerOpen.

Flexibility

Online publication in Pastoralism gives you the opportunity to publish large datasets, large numbers of color illustrations and moving pictures, to display data in a form that can be read directly by other software packages so as to allow readers to manipulate the data for themselves, and to create all relevant links (for example, to PubMed, to sequence and other databases, and to other articles).

Promotion and press coverage

Articles published in Pastoralism are included in article alerts and regular email updates. In addition, articles published in Pastoralism may be promoted by press releases to the general or scientific press. These activities increase the exposure and number of accesses for articles published in Pastoralism.

Copyright

Authors of articles published in Pastoralism retain the copyright of their articles and are free to reproduce and disseminate their work (for further details, see the copyright and license agreement).

For further information about the advantages of publishing in a journal from SpringerOpen, please click here.

Open access

All articles published by Pastoralism are made freely and permanently accessible online immediately upon publication, without subscription charges or registration barriers. Further information about open access can be found here.

As authors of articles published in Pastoralism you are the copyright holders of your article and have granted to any third party, in advance and in perpetuity, the right to use, reproduce or disseminate your article, according to the SpringerOpen copyright and license agreement.

For those of you who are US government employees or are prevented from being copyright holders for similar reasons, SpringerOpen can accommodate non-standard copyright lines. Please contact us if further information is needed.

Article-processing charges

Open access publishing is not without costs. Pastoralism therefore levies an article-processing charge of £865.00/$1355.00/€1105.00 for each article accepted for publication.

If the corresponding author's institution participates in our open access membership program, some or all of the publication cost may be covered (more details available on the membership page). We routinely waive charges for authors from low-income countries. For other countries, article-processing charge waivers or discounts are granted on a case-by-case basis to authors with insufficient funds. Authors can request a waiver or discount during the submission process. For further details, see our article-processing charge page.

SpringerOpen provides a free open access funding support service to help authors discover and apply for article processing charge funding. Visit our OA funding and policy support page to view our list of research funders and institutions that provide funding for APCs, and to learn more about our email support service.

Indexing services

All articles published in Pastoralism are included in:

CAB Abstracts

CAB International

DOAJ

Global Health

OCLC

SCImago

SCOPUS

Summon by Proquest

The full text of all articles is deposited in digital archives around the world to guarantee long-term digital preservation. You can also access all articles published by SpringerOpen on SpringerLink.

We are working closely with relevant indexing services including Web of Science (Clarivate Analytics) to ensure that articles published in Pastoralism will be available in their databases when appropriate.

Peer-review policy

Peer review is the system used to assess the quality of a manuscript before it is published. Independent researchers in the relevant research area assess submitted manuscripts for originality, validity and significance to help Editors determine whether the manuscript should be published in their journal. You can read more about the peer-review process here.

Pastoralism operates a double-blind peer-review system, where the reviewers do not know the names or affiliations of the authors and the reviewer reports provided to the authors are anonymous. The benefit of double-blind peer review is that it allows reviewers to judge the manuscript based on content alone, and they are not unconsciously biased by knowledge of who the authors are.

Submitted manuscripts will generally be reviewed by two to three experts who will be asked to evaluate whether the manuscript is scientifically sound and coherent, whether it duplicates already published work, and whether or not the manuscript is sufficiently clear for publication. Reviewers will also be asked to indicate how interesting and significant the research is. The Editors will reach a decision based on these reports and, where necessary, they will consult with members of the Editorial Board.

Editorial policies

All manuscripts submitted to Pastoralism should adhere to SpringerOpen's editorial policies.

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Citing articles in Pastoralism

Articles in Pastoralism should be cited in the same way as articles in a traditional journal. Because articles are not printed, they do not have page numbers; instead, they are given a unique article number.